This is now really a lot of money for you, and you do some Due Diligence…
With regard to the large amount of money expected to be invested, you are quite nervous and are aware that you can’t be 100% sure if this is legit at all. But Ed has an answer to everything.
Nevertheless, there are a few things that look suspicious:
- The homepage of Derwent Investments is full of stock photos and doesn’t even state actual names of responsible persons
- There are no LinkedIn or other profiles of Edward or other persons you are involved with (they say that’s intentional to not get into insider discussions)
- Derwent Investments is not regulated in Singapore by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) which can be checked here
- ABE Technology’s website is full of stock photos and just a very few press statements
- The address of both companies in Singapore and Hog Kong are big business buildings, and you can’t find out if they are actually registered as tenants there, at least you don’t find the information online
- The bank account is not “Derwent Investments” but some strange other company name in Hong Kong (they say that’s due to tax reasons, they have many sub companies with a certain amount limit that are under their ‘umbrella’ organization – “you don’t want to pay taxes on all of this, would you?”)
But as you discuss these concerns openly with Ed, all is being agreed, countered and smoothened out resulting in his sentence “The truth is in the pudding”, i.e. you need to take the risk to find out.
And as in a bad film, you already know what is happening next:
You really put the big money in…
And there it goes…
From now on, you are in permanent thought ‘what did I do‘ and ‘if I pull out, all that is lost, so maybe it IS true after all‘?